Nothing says May Day like syphilis. Fa la la la la la la, fa la la la la la la!

The disease was something of an occupational hazard for the great composers. This week on “Music from Marlboro, we’ll examine the sad case of Bohemian master Bedřich Smetana.

Smetana had already lost his hearing at the time he embarked on his String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, in 1876, at the age of 52. Understandably, his malady would have been much on his mind, and the work bears considerable autobiographical influence – so much so, that he subtitled it “From My Life.”

Allegedly, the first movement is representative of the composer’s romantic ideals in life and music; the second, a recollection of the happiness of youth; and the third, a paean to love.

But it is the fourth movement that contains the most dramatic stroke, as the first violin shatters a mood of artistic fulfillment through the intrusion of a high, sustained harmonic E, suggestive of a ringing in the composer’s ears he experienced prior to going deaf. Syphilis would claim Smetana’s sanity and eventually his life, in 1884.

We’ll hear a performance of the quartet, from the 2007 Marlboro Music Festival, featuring violinists Hye-Jin Kim and Karina Canellakis, violist David Kim, and cellist David Soyer.

Antonin Dvořák played the viola in the private premiere of the work in 1878. We’ll open the hour with Dvořák’s own, unpretentious “Serenade for Winds,” which was given its first performance the very same year, when the composer was 37 years-old.

The serenade is written in the tried-and-true “Slavonic style” that established Dvořák’s fame. Its instrumentation and emphasis on melody recall occasional and ceremonial serenades of the 18th century.

We’ll enjoy it in a recording made in 1957, with oboists Alfred Genovese and Earl Shuster, clarinetists Harold Wright and Richard Lesser, bassoonists Anthony Cecchia and Roland Small, hornists Myron Bloom, Richard Mackey, and Christopher Earnest, cellists Yuan Tung and Dorothy Reichenberger, and double bassist Raymond Benner, all under the direction of Louis Moyse.

Marlboro musicians balance their Czechs, on the next “Music from Marlboro,” this Wednesday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

NOTE: Following today’s broadcast, I hope you’ll stick around for tonight’s Exploring Music with Bill McGlaughlin (at 7:00), as Bill continues his week-long celebration of Marlboro Music with performances of works by Jacques Ibert, Shulamit Ran, Mozart, and Beethoven.

PHOTOS: Czech out Dvořák (left) and Smetana